The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
CNLP 005 – An Interview With Craig Jutila
[MUSIC] >> Welcome to the Carrie Newhoff Leadership Podcast, a podcast all about leadership, change, and personal growth. The goal? To help you lead like never before in your church or in your business. >> And now your host, Carrie Newhoff. [MUSIC] >> Well, hey, everybody, and welcome to the podcast. My name is Carrie Newhoff, and we are into episode five. It almost feels like we're having a birthday or something. I mean, I kind of remember turning five, and it was cool. So we're five episodes into this, and you have made this such an incredible journey. Thank you so much. I mean, you've been so generous with your reviews on iTunes in whatever country you happen to be listening in, and we're hearing from people all over the world. So this is really, really cool. And you know what? You've just been great in getting the word out too, and helping get this podcast in front of other leaders. So you guys are amazing, and my goal in all of this is to simply help you lead like never before, and to help your team lead like never before. And it's really fun to take some of the conversations that often happen backstage or offline, online, because my dream behind this podcast is some of you know, is this. I happen to have the privilege of having some great leadership conversations. And I often walk away from them thinking, man, I wish my whole team could hear this, or I wish our elders could hear this, or our staff could hear this, or you know, often. I wish everybody could hear this. And what's really amazing is that the leaders that we've been able to talk to have just been so open, so authentic, so transparent, not just about their strengths, but also about their struggles and their weaknesses. I hope this is really going to help you lead like never before, because it's those honest conversations that always make me better as a leader, and I hope they make you better as a leader. So far, we've heard from Andy Stanley, Perry Noble, Casey Graham, and then last week from Cara Powell. And today, in episode five, you're going to hear from Craig Jutilla. I met Craig about 18 months ago, and he has just fast, became a friend, and he's a leader I'd heard about. I'd heard him speak. I know he wrote books, but I'd never had the opportunity to really connect with him. And we get into how we met in the interview, which we'll get to in just a second. But Craig's got a powerful story, and is so honest and so transparent about it. And the bottom line is this, sometimes leading can make you really hard to live with. And that's what happened to Craig. I know that's happened to me in seasons in my life. And he was a ministry leader at one of America's largest churches, Saddleback Church. He was leading their entire children's ministry program. And one day, he went home, and as he'll tell you, he found something that his wife wrote in her journal, and it floored him. And it began this whole process of him rethinking how to lead. I mean, he was winning at work, kind of, but failing at home. And we've all been there. I mean, what good is it to really have a great ministry, but a terrible family? And so Craig, just so authentically, so honestly, tells his story. And if you've ever struggled in your marriage, even for 10 minutes, and I mean, who hasn't, I think you're going to find this really, really helpful. And hey, before we jump into the interview, just to let you know, we are in the middle of the orange tour. And I'm going to give you some more details at the end. But if you're around the Indianapolis area and you're listening to this, the week it's released, I'm going to be in your town on Thursday and Friday. I'm doing some keynote addresses, hosting a leaders lunch, and would love to have you join us. Hop on over to the show notes. So that's just carry new hof.com/episode5, or just go to orange tour.org, and you can register there. And in a couple of weeks, early November, I'm going to be in Texas, in Austin, and then also in Dallas. So we'll give you those details at the end. But man, it's fun to actually connect with you. And without a whole lot more, let's jump into the interview and let's hear from Craig Jutilla. Well, it is so much fun to have my good friend, Craig Jutilla, on the podcast today. Craig, thanks for joining us. Hey, thanks for having me, Carrie. Yeah, it's Craig and I met what? About a year and a half ago, we met at a conference we were both speaking at, right here in Canada. You were up north of the border. Yeah, it was great. It's one of those where I remember getting to dinner a little early, and you got there, and I thought, "Oh, geez, I know Carrie, but he's the spiritual giant leadership guy." I was a little intimidated, and you sat down, and honestly, you are the man when it came to helping me with all things internet related to the blog. And so, yeah, I mean, it's great, and we just hit it off, and that's, I consider you a great friend. Well, likewise. But it was because you were driving a Camaro that day. I remember it. Do you remember that? That was real, huh? You had a Camaro? You know what? I can't remember, but it may have been. It was cool. Oh, it was cool. And the other thing you need to know about Craig is he's an American whose favorite sport is hockey. Amen. Is there another sport really? Exactly. And I mean, you're from California, dude. You're from Orange County, and you love hockey. That's right. My dad was born in Calumet, Michigan, which is honestly, in the United States, they're Calumets above Canada in some spots. Yeah, it would be with the Upper Peninsula, is that where? Yeah. That would be north of where I am, north of Toronto. That's way north. Even for convenience. Right. Yeah, hockey is in the blood and not a lot of opportunity to play here, but play a little little street hockey and roller hockey, but not a lot of ice and so Cal here. Okay. Last thing before we jump in, because you got a powerful story I want to share with people, but one of your goals, I mean, I know baseball fans who are going to go see a game in every baseball stadium, but yours is to actually do that with the NHL, right? Yeah. Every hockey arena, so there's 30, right? And so I have been to 24 of them. And so I know your podcast will reach millions. So I just have to throw out if there's, if there's anybody that is prompted by the Holy Spirit in the Winnipeg area. Yeah. I have lots of friends in Winnipeg. So all you Winnipeg listeners, yeah, yeah, there's the meeting place out there and other great churches and I'm sure they can hook you up because the Jets are back, right? Amen. And you know, all the way back to the team, it was Solani days. And so, you know, Solani ended up with the Ducks, my favorite player and, you know, we started in Winnipeg. I got to get that one off the list. I think that's going to be the toughest one. Yeah. Just going the, well, hockey doesn't play in the summer. And I got to say what's weird too is you're the American, I'm the Canadian and I'm one of six Canadians that really doesn't follow hockey. So there's, there's a real ironic twist in all of this, but anyway, so Craig, I mean, you got so many aspects to your story. You just released your most recent book is all about the future family and, and modern family and some great stuff, great insights on, on family. But you have a pretty incredible personal story. So just give us a little insight into how you got into ministry. Some incredible success you had. And then there was a defining moment that changed everything for you. Tell us about that and how you got to it. Yeah. So I was in children's ministry for about 20 years. I consider myself still in it as it relates to family, but in a church for 20, first church for seven years and then it's Saddleback church for around 13. And you know, just an amazing time, great ministry opportunities. And I'm a first born, I'm actually an only child. Wow. So also the youngest child. Yeah, I'm all from one, which is, that probably qualifies me for counseling right there. But I will tell you that, you know, I was a born workaholic and I like to work, I love to work and I still do. And I just had no boundaries. You know, my wife would, Mary would prompt me to try to stay balanced. But you know, you work 40 hours, then 45 and then, you know, 50 and it's just a part of my personality to want to keep doing more, kind of the bigger, you know, faster, stronger kind of a thing. I'm familiar with that. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, at Saddleback, I had 30 paid staff in children's ministry. I had a couple million dollar budget just for children's ministry and staff. We were running almost 4,000, 4,500 kids, 1,600 volunteers. I say all that not as an arrogant or successful thing, but that where do you stop? And my answer to that eight years ago was you don't. And people need Jesus. And so you keep on keeping on. For me, I outpaced my potential and that is possible. And it is possible to run a successful ministry and be dead spiritually inside as a leader. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I've had people ask me about that and say, well, that's really borderline impossible. And I said, well, that may be true with the rest of the world. However, in my life, it was not true. I was spiritually dying and I could fake a good quiet time. If somebody asked me, I knew enough going to Bible college and seminary that I knew how to act and behave. So people didn't know that I was dying spiritually, but then I would come home and just be, you know, absent on edge, isolating myself, even from my family, kind of hiding within. So as ministry picked up, I thoroughly enjoyed it. And at the end of the day, you have to look in the mirror and you blame the guy looking back. Um, so, you know, we had to make some radical changes in our life, but basically came to a burnout point. See, this is why we became instant friends. You are so wonderfully refreshingly honest about that. Like when I've heard you speak about it, I've read your book and we've had personal conversations. I'm just blown away by that level of, of transparency and honesty. And I don't think you need to be, you know, the children's pastor at Saddleback and have millions of dollars in your budget to relate to what Craig's saying. I mean, I know a lot of small church pastors, 50 people, 70 people in their church who have no boundaries either. Gosh, I remember when our church was that small and man, it is so easy. Reggie Joyner taught me when I first met him, he said this, he said, the problem with needs-based ministry is there's no end to human need. And there will never be an end to your ministry. And so you struggled with that at, at one of the highest levels of success. I think people would experience in ministry and I think all of us can relate to that. So it became unsustainable, right? Tell us, tell us what happened on the day that everything kind of came crashing down. Well, Mary had been trying to get me to go to counseling for years. And I mean years, 10 years. And I kept saying, you know, I'm not going to go to counseling and honestly, you know, I appreciate the kind words of, you know, refreshingly authentic and vulnerable and people do have a tendency to describe me that way. I will tell you, I only went that way because I had to. Sure. I did not want to go. I didn't want anybody knowing our story. I didn't want anybody knowing that I was burning out and messing up and unhealthy spiritually because that transparency, vulnerability leaves yourself open to future attack. And so, you know, for me, that was, you know, we'll get to it a little bit later, but I was forced because somebody saw us in counseling because I didn't want to go to counseling and somebody we knew saw. So, but no, you know, Kerry, I got to the point where it was so bad, you know, Mary said she would go to counseling and that I needed to go and I said, no. And this was a back and forth argument. I told her I would change. I would change for 20 minutes, 20 days. You know, that was it. So I ended up one day, Mary left to go to the store, sat down on the couch, kids weren't here, and I was going to watch a little ESPN catch up on a little hockey. And I sat down on the couch and noticed a little crinkle like a crinkle in the, in between the sofa. And I reached my hand down there. It was a Cheetos bag, you know. Hey, you got kids. We've all been there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the trash, let's put it right in the couch. Anyway, there was a few other goodies. So I began to kind of clean up and I reached under the sofa. And when I reached under the sofa, there was a few things under there, but I found Mary's journal. And that was the defining day moment for me because I decided to open the journal. I didn't open at the beginning. I just opened where the pages fell at the top of the page, the first words that I read where I hate my husband. And I thought this, it was an outer body experience almost because I'm going, this isn't heard, this can't be Mary's journal. It's her writing. It's her language. You know, that can't be hers because I'm good. I'm a good guy. I'm a nice everybody at church loves me. Look at how successful I am. How can you hate me? Right. Everybody at church loves me. I have a corner office now. I have staff. I have all of this stuff. And that's why in the book, Mary and I call workaholism the most rewarded addiction in our country. Yeah. Because the more you work, a lot of times the more you make and the more incentives and bonuses you get. So I read that and it didn't get me better as I read further. So when she came in from being at the grocery store, we had a disagreement right there in the living room and things began to really unfold in a negative way from there. And that got us, really that was the catalyst to get us into counseling. Wow. You know, and I think Tony and I, my wife and I, we've spoken publicly about it. We've had some rough seasons as a couple too. And I don't know whether she ever wrote those exact words, but I can pretty much promise you there were days where she had those sentiments in her and it's a very humbling thing. When you're successful in many areas of your life, but at home, it's just hard. That's a tough place. And I know a lot of ministry leaders and just a lot of leaders period find it that way because the drivenness that makes you successful at church, successful in your business, successful in the marketplace can sometimes drive you from the people that you love the most at home. I saw that in law and in ministry, you're not, you're not exempt from that at all. So how did it get so bad without you knowing? How do you think that happened? Well, yeah, that's a great question. Here's what I would tell you. Not bad without me knowing, but it didn't get bad without Mary knowing or my kids being aware. So, you know, I think, you know, it's, if you put a frog in a kettle of boiling water, right? It jumps out. But if you put him in the water and then turn up the heat, it'll, it'll die. And so I think there's a little bit of that effect. And when you taste ministry success or any success, things are going well, you have a tendency to enjoy that. You enjoy the accolades. You enjoy those successes that come with all the hard work you're putting in. And you kind of dupe yourself into thinking that you can do more than you really can. And it's like our counselor said to us, I told him when he asked me, well, Craig, what's kind of like your overall, he didn't phrase it this way, but like your mission statement, what are you about? And I said, I'm, I'm here to change the world. And I can remember him looking at me and just saying, there's only one man that came to change the world and you just work for him. And although those words seem pretty simple, that was a kind of a catalytic conversation for me. I remember just breaking down in the counseling session because I felt like there was a weight off my shoulders. Like I didn't have to do anymore. And I got so caught up doing that I forgot being, and I would say today if I'm left up to that same thing, if I don't keep my heart, soul, guard your heart, the Proverbs verse, I don't think I would be, I would run wild again. And I can't allow that to really happen. It's very, very difficult, but it's your DNA. I mean, I'm like I said, I'm the only child I'm wired to kind of do and get stuff done, but it came crashing down. And I just over time, it wasn't, I can't point to one day, one season, one year where I woke up and went, oh my gosh. But the knock on the door was reading her journal and then really starting to think back and go, wow, 60 hours a week, no days off. When I left church, I had almost 400 hours of a crude vacation time. Wow. Wow. Wow. So there's two things to think about for your listeners, one, I should have taken that, right? I should have been aware of that for my soul card number two. My boss, whoever it was at the time, should have made me take it. So I think culturally, what we're doing is leaders in our church, although we're responsible for ourselves at the end of the day, you have to look in the mirror and be accountable to that person looking back. If you have people that are on an organizational chart under you, however you draw your organizational chart, in some way, at some percent, you are responsible for them and for the culture you're creating. Yeah. Yeah. You know, that's such a good word. And I want every leader to hear how honest this conversation is, I mean, we just dove right in. I know early in my leadership, I think it would have been impossible for me to be that honest. And even right now, it's a little bit uncomfortable, Craig. I'm sure a lot of people are going, I'm not sure whether I want to listen to the rest of this interview, like this is, this is freaking me out right now. And I don't know whether I'm ready for that level of trans, you know, that, that level of transparency because often we don't even want to tell ourselves the truth. You don't, we don't want to know your wife hates you or your husband hates you or your kids are, don't respect you or love you or, you know, you're fooling yourself. And one of the things I'm learning over time is I think you've learned very, very well is of all the lies we tell, the lies we tell, they're ourselves are the most deadly. And you can be honest before God and honest before yourself and honest with that inner circle, you're so much further ahead, but it's so hard. So, I mean, just thank you for that gift. Thank you. I think that's what I'm trying to say. Yeah. It's so helpful. And if it makes us uncomfortable, good, good. Yeah. Well, here, you know what I would say to Kerry is that, you know, Mary tried to get my attention for 10 years. Sure. And other people, as I look back, we're trying to get me help or speak into my life. Here's the thing. And this is what we write in our book, journals don't lie. And it came back to that for me because in a journal, you're pouring out your honest self and that journal was never meant to be found. It was about a woman who was trapped in a marriage that was going nowhere or declining. And speaking of a husband who was just arrogant and so caught up in helping everybody else and neglecting his family as a result. Now I never willfully said I'm going to neglect, but you only have 24 hours in a day, seven days a week. And when you spend most of that somewhere else, right? Yeah. Even doing good things, it's not healthy. So you end up neglecting by default. But when I opened that journal, it came to me, this is serious. All that other stuff that she was talking about, she was really being truthful. That's where the light came on for me. Yeah. And the job at work is almost always easier than the job at home, isn't it? I mean, it just is. Yeah. And what is work? What is home? Right? Yeah. I mean, we're on all the time. Oh, you and I were talking about that before we started recording, right? Like basically, I'd rather lose my luggage than my backpack, which has all my devices in it. Right. It's just life today. You're absolutely right. So when are you off, when are you on? You write about that in your current book. But the book, by the way, we're talking about it'll be linked to in the show notes. It's called From Hectic to Healthy, written by Craig and his wife, Mary, a couple years ago, just so helpful. And in the book, actually, you talk about sin leading or spin rather leading to sin. Right. And I thought that was a really helpful distinction. Can you talk to us about that? What do you mean by that? Well, being around it long enough, what we say is life spin always leads to sin because when you are hectic and hurried, you have a tendency to drift in your soul care. And when you drift, you always drift to the least point of resistance. And so when we talk about spin, when somebody says I'm in burnout mode, it's never just burnout. There's a lot of things that come with it. And through interviews and talking to other pastors or other people, not only administered but caring professions like counseling or health care, those kinds of things. Burnout carries a lot of expense with it. It could be some type of addiction. It could be in unhealthy personal relationships and appropriate relationships. But what it is is a Dr. Archibald Hart would call you, you become addicted to your own adrenaline. And in some ways, by keeping yourself over busy, you are creating scenarios that allows your body to release adrenaline. And so in a sense, you get into this practice of wanting more busy or things that become what could be borderline inappropriate or unhealthy. And so when you look at burnout, there is often being towed alongside it. Some unhealthy component. So that's when we say life's spin leads to sin, whatever that is, it could be something. But it is really, from what we've seen, it really seems like there is more than just hey, I'm burned out, I'm tired. It goes much, much deeper than that. Yeah. You know, I can relate to that totally. There was a season in my life because I was an extrovert at one point, I remember taking the Myers-Briggs, I was an extrovert now, I'm an introvert, not profoundly, but I refueled by being alone. And there was a time where I feared being alone and I look back on that now. And I think I feared being alone because God wanted to wrestle some stuff down in me. And I think I knew if I was alone and quiet for long enough, that would come to the surface. And so just always stay busy, always stay active, always have noise around you. And one of the things I learned, I had to crash personally about probably eight, nine years ago now. And one of the things I learned out of that was to crave silence because it will reveal what's really inside. And if, you know, silence is your friend and reflection is your friend. But man, when you're out of control and you've got life's been going on, that's so hard to access. So. Absolutely. And there's a difference I found out between being alone and being isolated where aloneness, what you're talking about is time to listen to God, to hear, to be attuned, to be attentive, to sit quietly. And I did not do that. I will fully chose isolation. I will. We chose isolation. And you write about this in the book too, right? We talk about isolation versus being alone. Yep. Say more about that. So what happens? So yeah. So what ends up happening is you're not vulnerable. You're trying to keep out this outward appearance. And so when we talk about spin, it's like my nickname and why we titled the first four chapters spin, my nickname was Taz, like from the Warner Brothers character, Taz Manian Devil. I could look back after 17 months of counseling and, you know, eight years separating this conversation from the burnout and laugh a little bit. But people literally saw me as this person who would come in and spin and not really say a lot, but cause some chaos and kind of lead. And I go, that's me. And you know, when the reality of that hit and you start looking, you know, back and who you spun up against and what was in your wake, you go, I really am that person. I don't want to be alone with anybody and I don't want to be alone with myself. And that, for me, was very, very difficult. And it's like you said, Carrie, and you experienced a little bit of this too, is that you don't want to stop for fear of what will be revealed. Yep. And that doesn't have to be in workaholism. I know shopaholics who just, you know, if I'm not out or people who are so social, like they just fear being alone and I think that fear is, I'm afraid what I'm going to find out. And if you're afraid of the silenced, good warning sign to pay attention to. Now the remarkable thing to me, Craig, is that this story has a happy ending. You and Mary are still married, not just because you have to be, but you know, she doesn't hate you anymore and things have changed. What helped you recover your marriage and recover your life? Three things, one, my wife and two, our counselor and three, the power of the Holy Spirit. And here's what I would say, thank the Lord that, I don't know how to say this to make it palatable that my wife stood up to me because most people who are workaholics, they have a tendency to be driven, opinionated leader and, you know, an unhealthy leader, there's not too much space between leader and bully that you are unhealthy. It's like a leader, a leader who's unhealthy can become a bully. And I think I crossed that line. I think people were intimidated. I don't know if they were afraid, but they were frightened maybe, intimidated because there were times when I would just get mad, get upset and blow off steam or whatever you want to call it. And as a leader you used to getting your way, right? You are. You are. Let's just say it. That's true. You are. And if you don't get your way, you keep pushing till you do. And that's not something healthy. Yeah. And I can, you know, here's what I would say is that she, after all the conversations, she gave me an ultimatum and that changed my life. And I think with leaders who are committed in a marriage that truly value that marriage, my wife said, we go to counseling or we're not together anymore. That's it. We're done. And that, you know, when you're, when a leader's given an ultimatum, you either, you know, say, okay, bye bye, go or you go, I got to work on this. And I'll be honest with you, Carrie, I was caught in between. I go, I don't know. I want to tell you my, my natural reaction where I'm at right now with an unhealthy soul is go. And then the other side, the little bit of health somewhere in my body was like, I got to fight for this. Yeah. So we got into counseling. So, you know, Mary stood up, said, we're going. So she found a counselor as actually a guy, Jim is his name. And he only would see pastors. So we went. I'm laughing with us, not at us. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. So you would see Jim. Literally, I probably tried to bowl my way through that for three months. And of course he sees right through it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And they can just see the, the malarkey coming a mile away. Yeah. And he hung in there with us 17 months of counseling and power the Holy Spirit. And I would like to add a fourth that just kind of escaped me is friends. We had some incredible friends that along our journey decided to walk with us and changed revolutionized how we do life now and revolutionized life altogether. So, you know, those four things really kind of got everything together, got us going. And Carrie, I heard a lot of stuff in counseling I didn't know before. And here I am counseling other people in how to be healthy. Well, I'm literally dying or dead myself. So, you know, there's something there. I don't know what it is. I haven't locked my arms or head around it yet. But there's something there that we should explore as pastors that because we keep getting, getting, getting, right? I remember that we need to get back. The first time I went to counseling with my wife, it was 12 years ago. And I remember driving. It was about a 45-minute drive north of where I live. And this is a guy I knew. I trusted. I mean, I thought, okay, if there's anybody I'm going to talk to about this, his name was Jim. I'm going to talk to Jim about it. And I remember pulling into the parking lot and Tony got my wife, Tony got out of the car first and it was everything I could do not to put the car in reverse and say, I'll pick you up in 45 minutes or an hour because I kept thinking, I don't need this. Like, I know I'm broken, but I'm okay. God's going to take care of this. And for me to walk into his office for the first time 12 years ago and go, how my name's carry? I have a problem. Was just such a battle and I kept thinking in that parking lot, counseling is something I send people to. It's not something I do. Right. That's just pride. That's pride. That's what that is. Yeah. Absolutely. Why did you feel that I'm interested and why you felt like, oh my gosh, I don't want to go in here. Was it somebody would see me or what with it? Yeah. You know, I didn't want to admit that I had any problems because everybody else had the problem, right? I didn't have any problems and it was a powerful, powerful moment. And I've seen a number of counselors over the last 12 years and I'm not in every week, but I'll go back from time to time. Tony and I will talk about, oh, we need to tune up here or hey, I want to drill down on this issue and it's so helpful, but I think it was pride. I think it was a fear of really actually allowing this is this, you know, we fear the surgeon, we fear the knife that's going to come in and do the healing because it does hurt. I mean, you got to go under and they're going to cut you open and they're going to poke around and you're healthier on the other side. In fact, I mean, you wouldn't be in ministry today if you hadn't undergone that. I would not be in ministry today if I hadn't sought help. In fact, we'll link to everything in the show notes, but probably what I'll do. I didn't anticipate talking so much about my journey, but I'll put a couple of blog posts that I wrote on my burnout and how I got back in the show notes. So look for those on the blog. We'll talk about it afterwards. So Craig, keep going here of all the steps because I want to hear more about your story of all the steps toward recovering, keeping your heart in check, which ones made the biggest difference for you? Like there were one or two crystallizing moments or things that you did. What were they? Well, as far as practically like what is a practical takeaway, honestly was journaling. I started to journal and I am not, you know, I'm a writer. I'm not a journaler and I don't know how to explain that. I think I journal better now than I did, but I made it a regular occurrence and it was just writing how I was feeling. Some entries that day, you know, each day were, it could have been just a line. Honestly, Kerry, there's, you open up, look through it. Today sucked. Exclamation point. That was the journal entry for Wednesday the 23rd, right? But it was honest. It was honest. And that's the thing. See, I wasn't honest with myself. I wasn't honest with my wife. I wasn't honest with people I was where I was not, I was living a lie. And at least again, journals don't lie. You can be honest in that moment. So for me, journaling, I would say by far was the most absolute practical step. The other thing is, you know, it's over time. It's a journey over time and it doesn't get better overnight. I thought I would go in three months. You know, we're back out. We're doing ministry. It's great. It actually gets worse. And Mary and I, we have a couple hundred emails from people that are like, hey, we went to counseling. We've been a couple months. It's getting worse. And we go, yes, absolutely. I would say it gets worse, you know, for the first three, four months because, you know, you're trying to hide. And then the surgeon, like you said, is starting to unpack this stuff. And I think it's very healthy to work through that. So we worked through that and started getting some practical ways. For me, I would not communicate with my wife in a way that was healthy. So I had to start communicating and learning how to communicate in a healthy way. And honestly, putting my family first at the expense of anything else that was going on. But practically the drilling was huge for me. That's good to know. I've tried a journal. I'm not a journaler, but I totally resonate. And other people are. So I don't say that in any way to disparage it. I think it's great. The other thing I would say is, I haven't heard anyone quite say it the way you said it, but it does kind of get worse before it gets better. I got a little bit better 12 years ago, but it was four years after that, I found the bottom. And that was very, very painful because you're really undoing a whole lifetime of bad habits or bad behaviors or bad thinking. A lot of it is just how you think about life and how you think about things that kind of has to be undone and you rediscover the gospel all over again and you realize, oh, this is the way Christ does it. Oh. This is the way the kingdom of God is, oh, this is the way we were meant to relate to each other. And oh, this is how I serve people. This is, you know, that whole process. It's really the theological word is sanctification. Yeah. It takes time. It takes time. It does. Yeah. I think what happens is when I started ministry, my head and heart were connected. And then over time, I just started to live in my head and you could live in your head a long time, but going to counseling reconnected my heart and connected my head to my heart, which brought back living out because we, you know, we live up in our head. We know everything most of us have been to seminary or had some education. So we can, we know how to act. We know how to behave. And when it gets reconnected to your heart, that's when the tears start flowing. That's when there's a potential or a chance for authenticity and for health to begin again. And to live out what God put in, that's the way we've seen it. You know, that's a good word. So you mentioned you're never really done. What does it look like now? Your eight years on the other side of it. Does it ever just get better or is this something you're just always fine tuning along the way? I say it's, you're always fine tuning because I'm still an only child raised by divorce parents, my drive with the exception of a couple of years where I felt like I didn't even want to get out of bed, you know, hitting the bottom and just going, okay, I don't like it here, but at least I could lay down. You know, that was not healthy. And you know, once you kind of come back, you want, you just keep wanting to do more. So it's this constant, my DNA is my DNA. Yes. So it's really about not changing your DNA. It's about changing your health practices. So you know, what have I done? So I've got two guys in my life, Martin and Jay, meet with them later tonight. And they speak into my life. I speak into their life. They know everything about my life. I know everything about their life. And the great thing is we do life together. We do life together as families, we do life together as men. And I trust them. And they do life with me. They keep me there and present and living moment by moment. But I'll tell you, Kerry, just back up just real quick. The thing I told you about, you know, life would not be the way it is if it actually didn't come to the surface in counseling when one day I called up my Tuesday to 15 butt kicking because that's what time our appointment was. Oh, yeah. Because it was all about, I don't mean this in an arrogant way. It was all about me for the first five months because I was messed up. And so at one point, I got mad and I said, you know, she needs help to pointed to Mary. And it got bad, very well. Yeah. It doesn't. And it got really bad. And so our counselor would allow us to walk out the back door because he would say, hey, you may not want to go through the lobby. And that was key to saying you probably know those people because when you're in a church of, you know, 15,000, I didn't want anybody to see me in the marriage and family child counseling clinic place. And I lost my mind after that. And I walked out the front and Jim was like, Craig, just go out the back and I opened the door to the lobby. And there's a gal there that volunteers in our ministry and she said, Oh, Pastor Craig, Mary, how are you? And of course I faked it. Hey, great. Fantastic. Yeah. We're here to help. Good. Yeah. And he's in the bathroom. We had to go. So I got out in the parking lot. Now I'm escalated more because somebody saw me and now I'm going to go on a prayer list and everybody's going to know that I messed up and it was a nightmare. So Mary and I who drove separate, by the way, we get into an argument, Carrie. I've told you the story. We get an argument in front of the counseling center. That's a full blown argument pointing at each other. We finished the argument, get in separate cars and drive away. The next week I figured, well, we're already on a prayer list. Somebody knows. You know, somebody's seen this. We're now we're vulnerable, open to attack. And so I walk out the front again, saying gal, Tuesday, 2 15, butt kicking. We come out at three. She's there. She looks at us, comes over, gives us a hug and starts to cry. She says, I want to thank you guys. And I'm thinking what on earth, you, you're messed up. You go to your appointment now because I don't know why you're thanking us. And she said, I just really got to thank you guys. She says, my family comes every week. We all drive together. And I've been trying to get them to go to counseling. And they say counseling is for weird people. And she said, last week they drove me and I asked the question, did they stay here or did they go to the drive you off of your knees? You're getting all this feeling in your chest. Yeah. What's the bottom line? And she goes, no, no, they saw you and Mary come out. Of the counseling center last week. The week we had the, you know, they disagree down in the parking lot. And I said, oh, they saw us come out. Yeah, they saw you come out and talk and get in your cars and go. And I thought, okay, just when I thought it couldn't get worse, it got worse. And she threw tears. She's fighting back tears. She says, I have to, I just have to thank you because when they saw you come out, when I got finished with my appointment, got in the car, they said they saw you. And they said, listen, we saw Craig and Mary come out and we're going to go to counseling now because if Craig and Mary can go to counseling, then we can go to counseling. And their whole family started going to counseling because they saw us walk out, get in the fight, honestly, in the parking lot and drive away. And that family, something resonated in them. Now that did not make sense to me at all. It didn't make sense at all. And what I've come to understand is that all of us are hurting in some way, not that all of us need counseling, but all of us are hurting in some way. We're all messed up. And I think they just needed permission to say, me too, hey, I see Craig and Mary, look at them. That was on in our house. Me too. And I think when we're honest, and so if you were to ask me or people that knew me 10 years ago, I was a closed book, you cannot read me. I will not let you inside. After that exposure, we started to share a little bit. And then that's when we were approached to write the book. And we even took stuff out of our journals during our journey to understanding balanced life, to write down what we were feeling in those moments. So fast forward, Kerry, on your question about maintaining health, it's a moment by moment connection to Christ. It's a mindfulness, it's an awareness. And it's asking your most trusted advisor, if you're married at your spouse, am I overworking? Am I overdoing it? And it's that constant tension. It's not a static thing. It keeps moving. It does shift. Yeah, it does shift, absolutely. So that for us, it was like, you know what? It's real easy to hide in the dark and in the quiet. And the more I think, the last chapter, we had four sections, it's understanding spin, what causes us to spin. So it's understanding spin, learning stop, how do you actually stop? Then to set a healthy pace and continuing walk. And in the continuing walk section, we talk about what the enemy does to deceive us. And one of those things is to keep us busy. And we learned that, at least for me, those types of things, like keep putting carrots in front of you, you know, really is unhealthy. We have to have the ability to say no. You said earlier in the podcast about setting boundaries, extremely healthy to do so. And I will tell you, if I have to make a decision now, I will always err in the decision of my family. And I know those family ministers that are listening, if you want a great family ministry in your church, start it in your home first. That's a great word, Craig, I can't thank you enough for that story you told. Because, you know, theologically, I was sort of processing this whole discussion as we were having it. Because, I mean, we send the questions ahead of time, but this is live, it's real, it's not edited, all that stuff. And I'm almost getting in the back of my mind when you hear me and you talk so openly about our struggles, people are going, are you guys even pastors like, whoa, where does this come from? And what's going on, but here's the power of the gospel. When you were having that fight in the parking lot, Christ was with you. Absolutely. You were not removed from its grace. It's not like, oh, Jesus is with you in the good times, and then, you know, go fix your stuff. And when you come back and you get it right, he'll be with you again. No, no, no, no. He was there very much in the midst of all of it. And what a powerful story that somebody who saw you walk out the wrong, you know, the front door and then have a fight in the auditorium, the, so not in the auditorium and the parking lot sees that as, as, as a sign from God, because it is. And the sign from God is don't lose hope. You may be in the trenches right now, but it's the story is not over. And, and I'm with you that I think that's the powerful thing. Craig, our time's almost up, but I'll tell you, there are leaders right now who are going, oh, my goodness, I did listen to the end. That's me. I'm scared. What do I do? Do you have even a first step or a second step you could, you could encourage those people with those leaders with absolutely, um, you know, I always say go to counseling. And I don't mean doesn't have to be a professional counselor initially, but you've got to be able to, you've got to be able to share the depths of your heart and your struggles with someone. Otherwise, you continue to put up layers of isolation. And I had to peel back a number of layers that I had put up. And a lot of that is because we're in an environment that, uh, if we share certain things, we may end up not working in that environment anymore. The reality is, I believe that maybe someone wouldn't end up working at their church or environment simply because they were open and honest about it. The reality is all of us are struggling. I don't care who they are and we're struggling with something. And I think if our community, when I say our community of leaders in ministry would say, listen, we're all messed up, me too, uh, we could start getting real about what we're struggling with and with the workaholism and anything that comes along with that. So my first thing is I always say, you know what, try to find a really good counselor. I don't care if you have to drive two hours because you don't want to be seen. Deal with that later. Deal with that later. Just start talking to somebody and counselors. I know some people poo poo it. I'm telling you what, it saved my life, it saved my marriage. I agree. Good. Christian counselor can make such a difference. Absolutely. It really did. And that's, that's where I say is that's start there. Read the book. Get some practical tips. Maybe you're on your way. You've caught yourself. I think there's some things in the book that would say, okay, I need to kind of recalibrate here. Because you've got a whole plan. I mean, most of the book is not about the crash. It's about the restoration and you lay out your whole story and have some suggestions for people. So Craig, I can't tell you thank you so much. I can't tell you enough how grateful I am for how honest you've been and how transparent you've been. And I know your story has literally helped thousands and thousands of leaders. It's going to help a few more today. Craig's doing some really exciting thing. You are still in ministry, not the same ministry, but God's using you in really powerful ways. Tell us a little bit about what you're doing now and how people can get in touch with you. Yeah. So we are companies called empowered living and they can find us at whowillyouempower.com. And our mission statement is to empower leaders and their families for life. And a part of that is helping them understand balance in life and living their season, what their season is and setting up appropriate and healthy boundaries. And I'm all in for pastors and people in ministry because here's what I would tell you, it's never over. It's never over. It's not over because God's going to use that if you allow him. God causes everything to work together for good, right? We don't like to use that verse in Romans 8, 28 because we usually use that when some catastrophe is hit. I will tell you on the other side, he does because God doesn't waste or hurt. God doesn't waste the things in your life. He knows, right? He knows. And he will use if you let him his power to work in you first, then through you second to touch others. And another step is to tell people to email me, go on our site, I return all emails. It may not be the same day or the same week. Great. Now if you really need to do it, what's the email address they can reach you at then? Well, so Craig, at whowillyouempower.com, yeah. Or whatever, reach out on Twitter or Facebook and I have a heart for pastors and people in ministry who are struggling in those areas. We'll put all those links in the show notes and Craig, thank you so much. And thank Mary as well. I know she hasn't been in on this conversation, but she's such a huge part of it and look forward to catching up with you again soon. Awesome. Thanks, Kerry. Well, man, I mean, when that interview was over, there were moments where I was almost in tears listening to Craig and maybe you find yourself in a similar place or maybe you're in a place where you're realizing, wow, that's me. I just want to give you encouragement to pursue that journey. I've spoken publicly in the past about some of the struggles my wife and I have had. I mean, we haven't had a perfect marriage, but we have a great marriage. And I think a lot of that is, you know, about 10 years ago, we started to drill down on our issues and now our kids are just out of the house and we are having the time of our lives. I mean, yeah, we still got garden variety stuff we deal with, but man, if you will drill down on that, it's amazing to see the story that God can write. So I hope this encourages you. I'm pretty sure it challenged you and if we can help in any way, that's great. There are resources in the show notes. So if you just go to Kerry Newhof dot com slash episode five, you'll find them all there. And if you want to know more about Craig and Mary and their story, I want to encourage you to pick up a copy of his book and Mary's book. They wrote it together called from hectic to healthy again, the links in the show notes, you can find it there at Kerry Newhof dot com slash episode five. And he also released just released a few months ago, a book called faith in the modern family. And it is just great about how to handle your family in an age where the demands have never been more challenging than they are. So Craig's a great writer. And if you want to just find him on his blog, his website is whowillyouempower.com. And you can connect with Craig personally there. And like he said, I mean, he'll answer your email. He's just a great guy and you can connect with him right there. It's whowillyouempower.com. So man, I really, really hope this helps. And what we want, you know, part of leadership is just having better family life. And when you drill down on those issues that are inside you, because I promise you they're inside me and I'm sure they're inside you, God has a way of just dealing with the dirt and moving it aside and giving you a new lease on life is Craig and Mary and so many leaders have experienced. So anyway, that's great. You can find everything on the blog, Kerry Newhof dot com slash episode five if you want more. And today's podcast is brought to you by the orange tour. It's a US tour. We are almost done, but we still got some cities to go and we hope you'll join us on them. I'm going to be in Indianapolis this week. If you're listening to this, when we release this podcast, October 16th and 17th, that's a Thursday night and Friday. I'm doing some keynote. I'm also doing some breakouts and hosting a leaders lunch on Friday and then November 3rd, 4th in Austin, Texas. And we're going to wrap up the whole tour November 6th, 7th in Dallas. So again, doing some keynotes, breakouts, leaders, lunch in those cities. So Indianapolis, Austin and Dallas are still to come. Hope to meet you there. You can simply go to orange tour dot org to find out all kinds of information there. And you can even register very affordable, easy for you and your team to connect there. And you can also go to the show notes so you can just go over to my blog and I would love to meet you. Hey, next up we've got Tony Morgan. So when you come back next week, you'll hear an interview with Tony. A lot of you probably know Tony, he's been blogging for a while, has been on staff at some of the most influential churches in the country at Granger Church and then at New Spring Church and then at another church in the Atlanta area and lately went out on his own and he basically just helps churches and he's helped our church. He's done an incredible job. We're going to talk all about teams, why they work, why they don't. That's volunteer teams and staff teams. Tony's got some great insights. That's next week on the podcast. And hey, if this podcast has helped you, I would love for you to leave a rating in the iTunes store. That would be amazing because when you leave a rating in review, iTunes pays attention to that and they push the podcast out to other leaders who otherwise might never have heard about it. So if you can do that or if you're listening on Stitcher or TuneInRadio, love for you to leave a rating and review there as well. So we're back in a week with a brand new episode with Tony Morgan. In the meantime, we're going to continue the conversation at kerrynewhoff.com. I would love to hear from you there. I publish some fresh content on my blog every week and maybe we'll connect in person on the Orange Tour. And before we go today, I just want you to know, I know this was really hard stuff and there was a season in my life where I would be terrified listening to an episode like this. I'm in a season right now where I'm just so grateful we can have these conversations. And I want you to know, Craig and I are going to be praying for you this week. So we will be and love to hear your story and you can always leave a comment in the show notes as well. And don't forget to check out Craig because he's going to have some resources for you that'll help you and he's willing to have a conversation as well. So we're praying for you and hope this helps you lead like never before. You've been listening to the Kerry Newhoff Leadership Podcast. Join us next time for more insights on leadership, change and personal growth to help you lead like never before. [MUSIC]